Monday, October 30, 2017

A new housing scheme, complete with unique roof gardens and expansive glazing, is set to be built on the Waverley regeneration site having secured planning permission.

Sky House Company (Waverley) Ltd, which has been created by the award winning architects at CODA Studios, has put forward an innovative scheme for 44 houses on land off Lescar Road on the Harworth Group's Waverley site - the largest brownfield redevelopment in South Yorkshire.

Approved in 2010, the largest, most complex, planning application ever considered by Rotherham Council gave outline approval for a new community on the site of the former Orgreave coking works, including 3,890 homes across 741 acres.

The reserved matters planning application is for 40 two bedroom homes with rooftop gardens and four three bedroom homes with private gardens, set out in four terraced blocks. The back-to-back houses are three stories high.

The plans also include 48 car parking spaces and a community pocket park. One condition relates to affordable housing provision.

Charles Dunn, planning consultant at the agents, Coda Planning, spoke at the board. He said: "It is fair to say that the proposals do stand out in design terms from most of the traditional family housing that has already been delivered in the new community. This the result of a conscious and joint effort between the applicant and planning authority to deliver a greater variety of housing types, and to really raise the bar in terms of the level of design and sustainability of the homes being built at Waverley.

He added that this contemporary design and different sort of housing is very much in demand.

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Nigel Hancock, assistant planning manager at Rotherham Council, told the planning board: "The houses are very different to what has been built up there so far, but this is deliberate. It's to ensure that it really and truly is an inclusive community."

The design of the scheme was described as being a bit like Marmite by board members who went on to vote ten to one to approve the proposals.

The houses are set to be built close to where the proposed £50m retail mixed use local centre will be. The scheme also gained approval from the planning board of Rotherham Council at the same meeting.

Around 800 homes are completed or being constructed and earlier this year, Harworth sold a further 8.17 acres to Taylor Wimpey, for the construction of 130 houses. This is Taylor Wimpey's third purchase of land at Waverley, following previous land purchases in 2013 and 2015 for a total of 192 plots.

Harworth also said that it plans to complete further residential sales at Waverley in the second half of 2017, reflecting the underlying strength of Yorkshire's housing market.